A desire to conduct research sent experience design and management (ExDM) students Autumn Tolman and Hannah Knowlton on a flight across the world. Their journey in the Netherlands—the two BYU Marriott School of Business students explain—has changed their fundamental understanding of experience design and provided an opportunity for them to share their findings.
“I love working with the students and teaching them how to more critically think about how they can change some of their models and how they view the world,” says ExDM associate professor Peter Ward. He says he leads research projects every year and invites students to apply and join him in expanding experience design studies.
Tolman, Knowlton, and other group members began their work by preparing a set of methodologies, refining the details until they traveled to the Netherlands during spring term. The students spent the first week in the country visiting places as regular tourists themselves before beginning their research
Partnering with students from Breda University of Applied Sciences, the group broke up into different team variations each day to investigate several research questions—including how crowding, spirituality, or novelty affect the tourist experience. They spent the rest of their time observing and communicating with other tourists in several specifically chosen areas across the country.
The studies had their highs and lows, the students acknowledge—but Knowlton and Tolman say their work felt valuable. “It was very, very meaningful to see another culture—and not just from a tourist point of view but from living like a local and interacting with the Breda students while learning Dutch words and phrases,” Tolman says.
For Knowlton, the field studies helped develop her interpersonal leadership skills. She often encouraged fellow students with a lesson she learned while serving her mission in New York: Rejection isn’t failure, but proof of trying.
Both Knowlton and Tolman, once it came time to fly back to the United States, recount feeling uplifted by the experience. “Saying goodbye to the other students was the most influential moment for me, because I was able to see both the impact we had on them and the impact they had on us,” Knowlton shares. Tolman says she felt similarly—even extending an invitation for one of her Dutch friends to come visit her house in the States.
After compiling all of their research, which they describe as a daunting task, the BYU Marriott students then submitted their research to academic journals. “We have a 30-page research paper; it’s awesome—the process definitely pushed us to know how to write a good research paper,” Knowlton says.
The result of the group's work was, the students say, even better than what they initially hoped for. While they applied for the Netherlands trip with aspirations to learn more about experience design and improve résumés, they also found leadership opportunities, subject matter, and new relationships.
And now Knowlton and Tolman can add one more experience to their list: The group was invited to present their findings in the 2026 Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research. “This is just one research project, and it will continue to grow and bloom past there,” Tolman shares. “But the learning from this experience has caused me to change how I fundamentally think about things.”